California’s urgent need to change approach to groundwater: Editorial

“Everyone’s talking about water. For once, they’re saying the same thing” is the motto of a California group called the Groundwater Voices Coalition.

Well, not exactly saying the same thing when it comes to all things water in our state. Just mention the prospect of an upcoming water bond, for instance, and you’ve got the same old fighting words: Too much! Not enough! Not a dime for Delta tunnels!

But it is true that, and rather of a sudden, Californians are speaking with more of a unified voice on the problems of this drought. For the first time since the question was annually asked beginning in 2000, more residents say that the drought is the No. 1 environmental issue in our state, according to a poll by the Public Policy Institute of California.

A whopping three-quarters of Californians say that they favor “mandatory” restrictions by water agencies to reduce use. Mandatory isn’t defined here, and probably means punishment for people other than oneself, but it’s an impressive number nonetheless.

And the fact is that in the past few of us would know, and fewer care, about a group called the Groundwater Voices Coalition. But we’re no dummies, Californians. We’ve been reading the reports derived from data supplied by JPL satellites showing that parts of our Central Valley subsided by 2 feet just between 2008 and 2011 — before the current severity of the ongoing drought. We know that desperate farmers since then have been sucking dry the aquifers below the formerly verdant land, drilling deeper and deeper in an unsustainable push to keep their crops alive. So, yes, we are unified as can be on the subject: 97 percent of aware Californians — in this case, registered voters — say they know groundwater is important to the state’s overall water supply. And majorities across party, ethnic and geographic spectrums say our state has to establish a groundwater management plan to deal with the issue.

We’re not sure they know about one odd detail about our state, so thirsty for water, so parched. It’s that unlike almost every other state in the nation and every one in the West, California has no comprehensive permit system for the regulation of groundwater use.

In Colorado, for instance, seven powerful Water Courts divide up the state and rule on any application for pumping groundwater. In Arizona, there’s a complicated application process for those who want to “withdraw a specific amount of water, from a specific location, for a specified purpose.”

But now in California, there is a new recognition that, in the same way zoning might stop your neighbor from building a skyscraper next door, the water beneath real estate in some ways belongs to us all, just as the airspace above the ground does.

When a farmer or anyone else drills down, ever-deeper, for water, in most cases it is not as if the water being tapped is from a reserve that exists only beneath one property. It’s likely in a pool that flows beneath many other landowners’ surfaces. Or from beneath public lands as well. In so many senses, that water belongs to all Californians, and ought to be well managed. But without the regulation that so many other states have, when the Groundwater Voices Coalition asked California voters it polled if they were concerned about the current method of resolving water disputes — litigation, often costly and lengthy — 57 percent said they were “very” or “extremely” concerned.

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The heartening news is that the Legislature is poised to take up two groundwater bills that aim to begin addressing the problem when it returns from a break in August, Senate Bill 1168 (Pavley) and Assembly Bill 1739 (Dickinson).

In different ways the bills would require groundwater to be assigned rankings from low to high priority for the state’s reserves and provide local groundwater agencies with the authority and assistance necessary to sustainably manage groundwater.

The editorial board, along with suddenly and properly concerned Californians, will have some time in the heat of our late summer to consider the merits of proposed legislation to change the way we allocate our underground resources in the same way as we manage water that flows in the Bay Delta, from the Colorado and Owens rivers and other surface sources. It is entirely understandable that under current rules, if you are a farmer with parched land, you drill down for the water that could irrigate it. But Californians also understand the drought has changed our lives, and that we must change the way we use water.